How Rock and Roll can still shock: by being uncool

Paul Lester has a post up on the Guardian's blog about how rock and roll has lost its ability to shock. He argues that between the fallouts of R. Kelly, Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse, there's not much material left for music that can shock a society that no longer embraces a genteel spirit:

I went to review The Zutons, expecting to be surrounded by tweedy toffs and straw-chewing yokels, the only 21st century boy in the village. But distressingly, the locals in the pub where I stopped to ask for directions to the gig didn't resemble extras from An American Werewolf In London; they looked just like their big city counterparts, all 3G mobiles, designer jeans, sharp haircuts and T-shirts emblazoned with the usual sexually audacious slogans (the blokes, too). And I finally realised: everybody is cool, everybody is hip, everybody knows. It was a sad moment.

I believe Lester misses an enormous point. The past ability to shock comes not from the substance of the music, but from the style. Lester uses The Sex Pistols as a sort of gold standard for shocking music. But the enduring shock of The Sex Pistols was not their calls for anarchy or allusions to gas chambers, but by how little they actually resembled rock stars. The band were spazzy, outsider weirdos with more than a little attitude to spare, and by giving the impression of not caring while still rocking out, they inspired the whole British punk movement and everything that followed.

While yes, there's very little topical subject matter that can be still be found shocking, there's still room to take people aback, and Lester even alludes to it in his column. The conversion of anti-cool punk rock into cool indie rock is a major source of the problem, which is why a band that doesn't give a crap about fashion, isn't afraid to talk politics like most current bands are, but still finds some way to take their music in a new direction, is exactly the kind of band we've been needing for at least 5 years. I would argue we haven't had a band like that since The Jesus Lizard broke up.